Nida Go sits with her daughter, Glejen Ting. Glejenís daughter, Jharrly Jean, age 14 months, died when the house they were sheltering in was hit by a floating industrial truck and collapsed. Photo by Jennifer Hardy/CRS
There are many stories of flood victims weaving through evacuation centers and temporary relocation sites after flashfloods triggered by tropical storm Washi (the storm is called “Sendong” in the Philippines) swept through low-lying areas of Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines. Stories of the youngest casualties stand out.
Glejen Ting, 20, and her mother Nida Go, 40, sit on a gently sloping hillside, resting in the shade and breezes that were scarce in their first evacuation site after tropical storm Washi. Their faces reflect the long days and noisy, restless nights after their home was washed out to sea. They’re relieved to be in a new, more open site, but as each hot day passes, the reality of their loss becomes a heavier burden. They are grieving the death of Glejen’s first baby and Nida’s first grandchild, Jharrly Jean. The bright eyed 14-month-old girl delighted her parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. Now the whole family waits to see if they will have a chance to properly say their goodbyes.
Nida described her family’s scramble for high ground as the flashflood took her neighborhood by surprise. “When we heard the neighbors’ shouting about the flood, we climbed on a roof. When the water moved higher, we thought the tree near our home would be best. But there were too many people in the tree, and it broke beneath us.”
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Posted
January 6th, 2012 in
Asia, Emergency Response, Philippines by:
John Lindner |
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After 40 years of service to the world’s poor, CRS President Ken Hackett is retiring at the end of this year. Ken thanks supporters in this World Report podcast.
Posted
December 29th, 2011 in
by:
John Lindner |
2 Comments »
Severe weather badly affected harvests in North Korea in the mid 90s. CRS was part of a U.S. faith-based consortium that supplied food aid to affected communities. Photo by Tom Price/CRS
The news that Kim Jong Il, the “Dear Leader” of North Korea died, came as a surprise to the world. For me it brought back memories of the CRS efforts to assist the people of that destitute country.
Just after returning to my office in Jakarta after lunch one day in 1996, I was handed a note informing me that a call had come in from the North Korean Embassy. As the regional director for Southeast and East Asia at the time, we had stretched ourselves to assist people in remote places such as Papua New Guinea and the Russian Far East, but North Korea was not on our map.
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Posted
December 28th, 2011 in
Asia, North Korea by:
John Lindner |
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Dear Friends,
I am so grateful and humbled to be able to greet you for the first time as president of Catholic Relief Services. Your wonderful solidarity with our poor brothers and sisters around the world inspires me as this new year and this new phase of my life begins.
When Ken Hackett first knocked on my door 8 years ago and asked me to consider becoming one of the first lay members of the CRS board of directors, I admit I was not that familiar with this great organization. Certainly, I knew of CRS from Operation Rice Bowl and other collections at church, but not much more. It was after I joined the board that I realized I was like the character in that John Denver song who was “coming home to a place he’d never been before.”
CRS completes a circle that began for me decades ago in Hong Kong. Then a British colony, Hong Kong was home to many people like my parents, refugees who fled China, first from the Japanese and then the Communist regime. Although I did not know it at the time, CRS was working in Hong Kong then, helping refugee families less fortunate than mine.
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Posted
December 27th, 2011 in
by:
John Lindner |
6 Comments »
We are so very pleased to report an important victory in protecting the lives and dignity of our brothers and sisters around the world.
Congress finally passed, and the President signed into law, the final spending bill for the fiscal year 2012 that includes funding for poverty-focused international assistance. In an extraordinary turn-about, funding levels for these lifesaving and life-changing accounts increased by nearly 3% over fiscal year 2011 levels. You did it! Your advocacy, along with efforts from many Catholics and others across the United States, helped restore some of the deep cuts made to poverty-focused international humanitarian and development assistance last year.
This outcome means that our nation will continue to do its part to feed the hungry, vaccinate children from deadly diseases, shelter refugees fleeing conflict, and provide clean water to impoverished communities around the world. This is a significant accomplishment in such a difficult economic environment. Read more about the impact of this development in the Catholic Relief Services press release.
There is some bad news, though. The Emergency Migration and Refugee Assistance and Debt Restructuring accounts unfortunately suffered significant cuts this year. And we expect these budget battles to continue next year, with more at stake and more serious cuts to poverty-focused international assistance looming. Your voice will be needed more than ever before to keep the momentum going!
To learn more about what your advocacy efforts accomplished this year, make sure to join our conference call on December 20, 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT.
Thanks to the time you took to raise your voice with your elected officials, children and families across the globe will enjoy special gifts this Christmas: desperately needed assistance amidst difficult challenges in their lives.
Posted
December 20th, 2011 in
by:
Patrick Carney |
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Flash floods caused by Tropical Storm Washi have killed more than 1,517 people on the southern Philippines Island of Mindanao. Catholic Relief Services continues to work with the Diocesan Social Action Center of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro and Xavier University to respond to the December flooding.
After assessing the biggest needs of the affected communities, CRS is supporting temporary shelter construction, hiring people in cash-for-work programs and creating access to clean water and sanitation facilities for displaced families.
Donate here.
The CRS Newswire will provide updates as more information is available.
Posted
December 17th, 2011 in
Asia, Emergency Response, Philipines by:
John Lindner |
1 Comment »
A young girl in Somalia carries a jerry can full of water provided by CRS and a local partner. Photo courtesy of CRS partner staff
By Muzaffer
I have a daughter of my own who is now studying architecture at the University. When I compare her and the future she holds in her hands with that of the children I’ve seen in Somalia I feel deeply troubled. The only difference between my daughter and the sons and daughters of Somalia is that they suffer from the sin of circumstance. The one thing that separates them is that my daughter was born into comfort and they were born into poverty.
Of all the children I met during my last visit to Somalia there are two young girls that stick out in my mind, Fawziya, 11, and Naima, 8. To me they are the anonymous heroes and victims of this terrible drought.
Fawziya has never been to school and is completely illiterate. At the age of four Fawziya took over the care of her older brother, Abdulahi. who suffers from neurological problems that left him bedridden. All of her siblings attend school, but Fawziya was chosen by her parents to care for her brother because of her loving nature and gentle touch.
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Posted
December 9th, 2011 in
Africa, Emergency Response, Somalia by:
John Lindner |
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Volunteers float relief supplies on Styrofoam to stranded flood victims near Bangkok. Photo by Elizabeth Tromans/CRS
By Elizabeth Tromans
Filling the lobby of Caritas Thailand’s central office in Bangkok is a mountain of donated food and cases upon cases of bottled water. The Royal Thai Army quickly loads the food and water onto a military truck. In the lobby I find a group of ladies from various church groups bustling about, loading a few last items into the truck and taking turns snapping photos of each other. We boost each other up into the back of the truck. Amidst laughter and heaps of food we manage to find the last bits of open floor space, lay a piece of cardboard and settle in together in a pile bound for flooded neighborhoods on the outskirts of Bangkok.
Since July, Thailand has been suffering from the worst monsoon flooding in more than 50 years. At its height, floodwaters covered one-third of the country and affected an estimated 13.5 million people. The flooding made its way slowly south to Bangkok and surrounding areas. The crisis is taking a huge toll on the poor, particularly on the estimated 2.2 million undocumented migrant workers who have no access to government services.
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Posted
December 9th, 2011 in
Asia, Emergency Response, Flooding, thailand by:
John Lindner |
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# Thirty years into the pandemic, UNAIDS estimates that 33.3 million people globally are living with HIV. This number includes an estimated 2.5 million children under the age of 15 years.
# The number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy in low- and middle-income countries has increased thirteenfold since the 2004, to more than 5 million. However, only 35 percent of people in need of treatment are currently receiving it. Roughly 10 million people cannot get the medication they need.
# Catholic Relief Services began supporting its first HIV project in Bangkok, Thailand in 1986. Today, CRS and our partners directly support more than 4.8 million people affected by the epidemic.
# Through the AIDSRelief Project, CRS helps provide lifesaving antiretroviral therapy to more than 220,000 people living with HIV in nine countries; more than 18,000 are children.
Learn more here.
Posted
December 1st, 2011 in
by:
John Lindner |
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Father June in the hospitality house, where he has been assisting migrants to recover from recent floods in Thailand. Photo Elizabeth Tromans/CRS
By Elizabeth Tromans
At the foot of an overpass about 40 km northeast of central Bangkok, Father Ongart Kaesue, known as Father June, pulls over his truck and announces, “This is where the flood begins.” A volunteer wearing a bright orange vest asks drivers their destination in order to arrange rides for the dozens of people standing on a nearby platform. “Saphan Mai,” says Father June, and the volunteer shouts the location into the megaphone. A few people with bags of groceries climb into the back of the truck and we cautiously continue into standing water.
Father June didn’t realize the calamity ahead of him when he began working with the National Catholic Commission on Migration (NCCM), a part of Caritas Thailand, four months ago; he had only just been ordained as a priest in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
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Posted
November 30th, 2011 in
Asia, Emergency Response, Flooding, thailand by:
John Lindner |
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